Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• French Industrial Output Tumbles as Recession Looms. French industrial production fell more than expected in January as Europe’s second-largest economy teetered on the brink of its third recession in four years. Output from factories, mines and utilities fell 1.2 percent in the month from December, national statistics office Insee said today. Economists had expected a 0.2 percent drop, according the median 25 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The decline underlines difficulty President Francois Hollande faces in trying to revive an economy that fell back into recession early last year and shrank again in the fourth quarter. Factory output fell 1.4 percent in January and 4.6 percent in the three months through January, led by a slump in car production. “France remains stuck in a recessionary mode,” said Philippe Gudin, an economist at Barclays in Paris. “The unemployment rate is flirting with historical highs and household income is hit by higher taxes. The stabilization we had expected from the beginning of 2013 does not seem to have taken place.”
• Italy’s Grillo Threatens to Quit Politics If Members Support PD. Beppe Grillo, the comedian-turned politician whose Five-Star Movement won 25 percent of the vote in last month’s Italian elections, said he would quit politics if his party members support a government led by Pier Luigi Bersani’s Democratic Party. “If there were a confidence vote by the parliamentary group of the Five-Star Movement in favor of the ones that have destroyed Italy, I would retire from politics,” Grillo said late yesterday in a post on Twitter.
• China's Inflation Fight Starts to Squeeze Consumers. While Japanese leaders have been making headlines by trying to end years of deflation and achieve an inflation target of 2 percent, their counterparts in China have a different fight on their hands. Far from promoting inflation, the Chinese are fighting to contain it—and the battle may get rougher in the months ahead. Consumer prices in China rose 3.2 percent last month, up from 2 percent in January. 
• Florida Lawmakers Reject Obama Medicaid Program Sought by Scott. Florida legislative committees rejected an expansion of Medicaid for the poor under President Barack Obama’s health-care law, a defeat for Republican Governor Rick Scott from members of his own party. A Senate panel voted today against expanding Medicaid, an option for states under Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. A House committee made the same decision on March 4.

Wall Street Journal: 

• Pressure Rises on Korean Peninsula. North Korea cut off a phone hot line to the South and "declared invalid" the Korean War armistice as the South Korean and U.S. militaries began Monday a second phase of their annual joint winter exercises. Later Monday, the U.S. Treasury put new sanctions on North Korea's primary foreign-exchange bank to step up pressure on the country's nuclear-weapons programs.  
• SEC Charges Illinois Over Pension Funding. Brazil's Vale Shelves $5.9 Billion Potash Project.

MarketWatch: 

• Global growth is burning out and fading away. Commentary: Economic gains are limited, but investors don’t know it yet/

CNBC: 

• 'Major Political Storms' Holding Back US: GE's Immelt. The explosion of new regulations on business and the "unprecedented" level of uncertainty about Washington's budget negotiations will keep the the U.S. from achieving its "full growth potential," General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said in a letter to shareholders Monday.
• Why Italy Could Be the Next 'Bad Boy of Europe'. Italy could see its borrowing costs rise above those of troubled Spain this week, analysts told CNBC on Monday, with a credit rating downgrade on Friday and continued political deadlock posing an ever larger threat. "Italy is really going to blow it up this week," Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capitol, told CNBC. "There is the downgrade that happened on Friday but now there is the Italian yield and the spread narrowing to the Spanish yield and there is the possibility that Italy gets more expensive than Spain. The last time we saw that we were in the middle of a euro zone crisis," Rundle told CNBC Europe's "Squawk Box".

Zero Hedge:

• Spot China's "Hot Money" Time-Bomb. (graph) 
• The Erosion Of The U.S. Economy In Two Words: Jobs And Wages. (graphs)
• 40% Of Germans 40-49 Just Say "Nein" To Euro.
• Dylan Grice Explains How "Crackpot" Central Bankers Are Destroying Society.

Business Insider: 

• BofA(BAC): Time To Sell Your Bank Stocks.
• NYC Will Have 'Sugar Police' Armed With 17-Ounce Cups To Enforce Bloomberg's Sugar Ban. 
• BofA(BAC): The American Energy Boom Is Creating A Sea Change For The US Dollar. 
• The PC Business Isn't Growing Anywhere, And It's Really Scary For Microsoft(MSFT).

Reuters:

• Paper Trail Goes Cold in Case Against S&P. In early 2007, as signs of distress began appearing in securities backed by residential mortgages, executives at Standard & Poor's began advising analysts responsible for rating mortgage bonds that they should put the phrase "privileged and confidential" on emails to one another. 
• Banks halt European share rally on Italian debt scare. Banking stocks held European shares below 4-1/2 years highs on Monday, depressed by a worsening outlook for Italy's public finances.
  The STOXX euro zone banking index shed 0.8 percent, as a downgrade of Italy's sovereign debt rating late on Friday triggered a selloff in the country's banks, which own much of Rome's public debt.
  Milan-listed Mediobanca, BP Emilia and Banco Popolare led sector fallers, shedding between 3 percent and 5 percent, after Fitch warned that inconclusive elections last month threatened to delay much-needed economic reforms.